U.S. military forces have discovered a smuggling ring moving copious quantities of explosives and weapons from Iraq to terrorist training camps constructed by the Saddam Hussein regime inside Syria prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The Pentagon also announced that the structure bombed by U.S. warplanes last week, described by many major media outlets as a wedding celebration at a private ranching operation, was actually a "dormitory-like" facility used as a "safe house" to facilitate the clandestine movement of foreign terrorists into Iraq from Syria. According to Pentagon officials, small arms, explosives, and bomb making materials are being removed from...

NEWPORT, Ind. (AP) - Army contractors halted operations Saturday at a western Indiana complex built to destroy a deadly nerve agent after nearly 500 gallons of caustic wastewater spilled in a contained area. No workers were injured or exposed to the hydrolysate, a byproduct of the destruction of the agent, when it leaked onto the floor of a sealed area at the Newport Chemical Depot, depot spokesman Dennis Lindsey said. The facility was to be shut down until the spill was cleaned up and its cause determined, Lindsey said. The western Indiana facility destroys the Cold War-era chemical weapon VX...

NBC reporter Dana Lewis reporting live video from newly discovered PLO terrorist training camp that was discovered in Iraq. It has obstacle course, shooting range, pretty much looks like one of the familiar AlQaeda terrorist training camps. Dana Lewis also reports that this camp is close to the infamous pesticide site and that there are some of the same French pesticide drums (not the others suspected of containing the CW "Cocktail" mixture) at the PLO camp along with gas masks and chemical suits. They're not sure what to make of it and the officer in charge was hesitant to say...

SOUTH OF KARBALA, Iraq — Four soldiers from the 2nd brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, with red sores on their faces and hands, were sent by ambulance to a rear MASH unit Tuesday. They were told they would be examined for possible contact with nerve or blistering agents. Once at the 30th medical brigade's mobile hospital at the 101st's headquarters south of Karbala, the soldiers were isolated from other troops and photographed. A doctor at the MASH, Maj. David Wolken, interviewed each soldier and measured his pulse and heart rate in a tent with a dirt floor. One soldier...

British companies sold chemicals to Syria that could have been used to produce the deadly nerve agent that killed 1,400 people, The Mail on Sunday can reveal today. Between July 2004 and May 2010 the Government issued five export licences to two companies, allowing them to sell Syria sodium fluoride, which is used to make sarin. The Government last night admitted for the first time that the chemical was delivered to Syria – a clear breach of international protocol on the trade of dangerous substances that has been condemned as ‘grossly irresponsible’. The sales were made at a time when...

The Blaze reports Thursday that Dugway Proving Ground, an Army base about 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, was locked down for several hours because a small amount of toxic nerve gas was unaccounted for. According to a statement released by the Army, less than a quarter teaspoon of deadly VX nerve agent went missing. VX, the most toxic nerve agent ever developed, is an odorless, colorless, tasteless liquid that can kill within 15 minutes of exposure, according to a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS). The agent, first developed in 1952, has been designated a "weapon of mass destruction."...

China detects deadly nerve gas at border with NKorea: report 1 hr 51 mins ago TOKYO (AFP) – China has detected deadly nerve gas at its border with North Korea and suspects an accidental release inside the secretive state, a Japanese news report said Friday. The Chinese military is strengthening its surveillance activities after detecting the highly virulent sarin gas in November last year and in February in Liaoning province, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources from the Chinese military.

An Alzheimer's pill that helps slow the brain damage caused by the disease may also protect against the effects of nerve gases and pesticides, US researchers reported today. They said the drug, marketed under the name Reminyl and Razadyne, completely protected guinea pigs against the nerve agents soman and sarin, as well as toxic amounts of pesticides. They gave the animals high doses of the poisons and treated them with Reminyl, known generically as galantamine, along with atropine, often given as an antidote for organophosphate pesticides such as paraoxon. "To our amazement, the animals treated with galantamine behaved as if...

US intelligence analysts misunderstood intercepted Iraqi communications, believing the orders were meant to deceive UN weapons inspectors searching for chemical or biological agents, a new report says. Instead, the conversation between two Iraqi Republican Guard Corps commanders that included the order to remove reference to "nerve agents" from "wireless" communications was intended to ensure the regime was in compliance with international demands to disarm, the Foreign Affairs magazine reported in its online edition this week. That conversation was intercepted by the United States in 2002. The article was based on a recently declassified US Joint Forces Command report assessing Iraqi...

<p>NEWPORT, Ind. -- About 30 gallons of a liquid containing a deadly Cold War-era nerve agent spilled at an Indiana chemical weapons depot, but it was safely contained in a sealed area and no one was injured, the Army said Saturday.</p>

Final preparations are under way at the Newport Chemical Disposal Facility, where workers are just days away from starting the destruction of VX nerve agent. Col. Jesse Barber, Chemical Materials Agency's project manager of Alternative and Approaches, goes over his checklist every day in anticipation of startup, he said. The 1,269 tons of the deadly nerve agent VX has been stored at the Newport Chemical Depot since the 1960s. A drop of VX the size of a BB can be lethal, the Army has said. Destruction of this nerve-agent stockpile will remove the risk of a terrorist target and the...

Journalists want to talk about “news,” not “olds.” If a story broke two days ago, it’s not likely to get coverage today unless there’s a new angle to discuss. And that’s a shame sometimes, because when a story has been insufficiently covered, you wish they’d revisit it. For example, on May 15, insurgents attacked an American military convoy. No, that’s not really news. But the fact that they used a shell containing the nerve gas sarin should have been. Sarin is so powerful that just a tiny amount can kill instantly. But this discovery didn’t fit the media template that...

9:47am (UK) Sarin Shell 'Probably A Stray' - Blix Former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said today that a shell containing sarin nerve gas used in an attack in Iraq was probably a stray weapon that could have been dated from the first Gulf War. Blix said the discovery of the nerve agent was not a sign that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction before the war last year. The US-led coalition used that claim to justify the invasion even though UN inspectors failed to make any significant finds before the war. The former Swedish foreign minister...

FORMER chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said that a shell containing sarin nerve gas used in an attack in Iraq was most likely a stray weapon possibly from the first Gulf War. Blix said today that the discovery of the nerve agent was not a sign that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction before the war last year. The US-led coalition used that claim to justify the invasion even though UN inspectors failed to make any significant finds before the war. The former Swedish foreign minister said the 155-mm shell used to attack a US military...

<p>The Army said it will delay destruction of a deadly nerve agent at the Newport Chemical Depot until early 2004 because the plant doesn't yet meet environmental standards or have a sprinkler system.</p>
<p>A federal lawsuit in Ohio, announced last month, also might add to the delay of a process ordered by international treaty and shadowed by terrorism.</p>

Army to Destroy Nerve Agent at Ala. Depot By KYLE WINGFIELD Associated Press Writer MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- The Army has announced that next week it will begin destroying more than 2,200 tons of nerve agent at an Alabama depot - an operation that nearby residents and environmental groups have criticized as too risky. The announcement Thursday by acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee came a day after state environmental officials issued a permit allowing the Army to start up its $1 billion incinerator at the Anniston Army Depot. Brownlee gave the order to begin destroying deadly nerve agent and...

<p>Firefighters, police and BART workers prepared Sunday for what was once considered the unthinkable -- a biological or chemical attack on a packed train during the evening commute.</p>
<p>In a predawn drill at the North Berkeley BART station, dozens of people pretended it was 4 p.m. on a Tuesday and that someone had just lobbed a canister containing sarin gas -- a deadly nerve agent -- into a 10-car Richmond-bound train containing about 700 passengers. Sarin, used in the 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 12 people in 1995, causes convulsions, paralysis and asphyxiation.</p>